By Kim Langona On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Two days later, President Trump declared a national emergency over the COVID-19 outbreak. To date, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 53,922 deaths and more than 957,000 cases in the United States alone. Immigration officials are already empowered to let people shelter in private residences as public health officials advise. According to section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Department of Homeland Security has the power [...]
Close Immigration Prisons Now
Yesterday, I published an op-ed in The New York Times arguing for the urgent need to shut down immigration prisons in the United States. I wrote this with my brother Carlos Moctezuma García, a partner at García & García Attorneys at Law, PLLC. You can read the opinion piece, Close Immigration Prisons Now, on the Times' website. [...]
TEDx Talk: Immigration prison isn’t the answer
Liberty is too precious for anyone to lose it because politicians want votes and private corporations want money. That's what I told the 5,000 people who heard my TEDx talk in Denver last November. Now you can watch too. My talk builds on Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants. Since the book's release in December, I've been talking to audiences around the United States about the United States' use of immigration prisons--why we use them and why we shouldn't. Check out where I'll be visiting in the coming weeks. And if you haven't already, I hope you'll pick [...]
“Migrating to Prison” – Denver Law Launch Today
In the weeks since my book, Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants, was published, it has received widespread exposure—from opinion pieces in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times to an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and NPR’s Here & Now. To mark the book’s release, students, colleagues, and friends from the University of Denver College of Law are joining me today for a reading and signing. Watch the conversation live on crimmigration.com starting at 12:00 p.m. MST. [...]
The Great Writ’s Elusive Promise
By Mary Holper In two recent cases, Reid v. Donelan and Brito v. Barr, a federal court in Massachusetts limited ICE’s power to detain people. But by requiring detained immigrants to file habeas corpus petitions to get a bond hearing in immigration court, Chief Judge Saris of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts undercut the strength of her own clear-sighted analysis. Reid and Brito are both class actions challenging immigration detention. For Reid class members, they must file a habeas corpus petition arguing that their detention under a 1996 mandatory detention statute, [...]
On Morning Joe
My book, Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants, has been out for about a month and the message that the United States hasn't always locked up so many migrants is receiving exciting attention. I was recently on "Morning Joe," MSNBC's morning news show, to talk about the bipartisan tradition of supporting immigration prisons. If you missed it, watch my conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and their colleagues now. The book has also received a lot of insightful coverage from other journalists. At the Texas Observer, Gus Bova says the book "makes [...]
Op-ed in New York Times & book excerpt
On the week that Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants is officially released, get a preview of the major arguments I raise in an op-ed published in The New York Times. The piece appears online today and in the print edition on December 3. If you're interested in more, you can read an excerpt from the book in Borderless Magazine. Let's not stop there. I would love to talk about the birth, growth, and potential end of immigration prisons in person. Later this week, I'll be speaking about the book in Denver, then I head to Seattle next week. More stops are on [...]
Book Tour: Migrating to Prison
From Seattle to Miami, the United States locks up migrants like no other country. In my second book, Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants ($24.99, The New Press), I describe the sordid reality of immigration imprisonment today. We are only two weeks away from the book’s official release date on December 3, but already it is making its way into readers’ hands. Silky Shah, executive director of the Detention Watch Network, says Migrating to Prison is“essential for anyone trying to understand how the United States came to have the world’s largest [...]